Users typically interact with the internet through World Wide Web (WWW) pages which offer hypertext capabilities. Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is a scripting or programming language which enables the content providers or developers of web pages to place hyperlinks within the pages, which then link to related content or data present in other web pages. The content or data present in each web page can be navigated by the end users using a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
For example, consider the typical web page displayed on a social media site. Such social sites include, for example, websites such as a social network, blog or web feed (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and RSS). The content on a typical social media web page is usually presented through a browser interface, and may include numerous kinds of data content such as images and associated metadata, text, rich media, and/or URLs directly at the site or linked from one or more other sources. In addition, the social media web page may also contain embedded applications or functional content (referred to herein collectively as “widgets”) placed at designated locations on the page.
There are many ways to construct web pages. In many cases, a specialized programmer, or a team of such programmers, is required to manually write the computer code for the web page. Depending on the exact functionality desired for the web page, it is possible that the programmer(s) will need to be experienced with numerous different programming languages. As is evident, this code-based programmatic approach has limited usefulness to non-programmers or to programmers who are not experienced with the specific languages needed for web programming.
Interactive web building tools are also available. These tools employ a visual interface with drag and drop capability which permits non-specialist programmers to construct web pages. However, conventional web building tools for constructing web pages are often limited in their capabilities, where only the functionality included within the tools can be implemented onto the web pages. Thus, if specialized functionality or configuration of the web page format is needed, the web page designer may still need to engage an expert programmer to write code to implement the web page. For example, many web pages designed for social media sites will need dedicated layout configurations and functional content to the address specialized social media needs, where these specialized layouts and functional content are not provided by conventional builder tools.
Given the widespread availability and usage of the internet, and the increasing usage of social media sites in particular, it is imperative for many businesses, organizations, and individuals to be able to effectively and efficiently produce web pages to be provided on those sites.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved approach to implement web pages. The improved approach should allow one to design and implement a specialized configuration for a web page layout, without requiring expert programmers to write computer code for the layout. In addition, the improved approach should permit the user to implement functional content on the web page.